Shave off the sheets of my songless childhood success,
expose the rotted age of me now―
My toothless breasts, my hips like a cracked Texas cow skull
hanging crooked on the butcher’s wall.

Remember what I once was.
The laurels of the Gene name.
My boom impact on the Baby Generation.
My pre-pubescent niche pizzazz.

Remember how the phone threw offers
for Little Jenny Sues into my Father’s ear.
He’d suck the bucks out of the cord like a straw into a spectrogram.
I never got a single sip.

I was his dark sparkler. A tarantula on fire.
An innocent with apple juice eyes and a brain
full of famished birds.

I used to play characters. Now I am portrayed.
As a dull domestic darling. A 30 year old 80 year old.
My husband’s office phone rescinds in silence. The only offers
are from the sink’s silverfish to kill them.

When I vacuum I think of Ingmar Bergman
fucking me from behind. I open
like the palms of Julius Cesar to a crowd.
Men used to rearrange their months to fit my seasons.

I suck a finger then the caldron in his tip.
He films my apron sticking to the sweat.
Makes this bad heart a pulse from the sky.
I am a distant explosion of myself again. A star.

Remember being a star.
This is how to die in the arms of a suburban wind,
learning how to be forgotten
over and over again.